


Doesn't Hurt Like I Thought It Would

by CopperCaravan



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: A+ bedside manner, Canon-Typical Violence, Codename: Tens, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hancock's always a little angsty, Pre-Relationship, Stitches, Unresolved Sexual Tension, even though it'd be perfect for smut, not smut, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 09:51:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6370147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hancock gets hurt and Tens takes care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doesn't Hurt Like I Thought It Would

**Author's Note:**

> Worth noting: my girl's not a lawyer. Bethesda can keep their super awkward origin story. My girl's ex-black ops and Hancock, at this point, doesn't know anything much about her past except that she came out of Vault 111; doesn't know about the cryo and doesn't know about the kid or the husband or the "work history."

Hancock’s been shot plenty of times. This ain’t new. But fuck if it don’t always hurt anyway.

This time’s not nearly as bad as it could’ve been (some pansy raider, back of his right arm, bullet’s in one piece) and there is, after all, a plus side to getting hurt these days: Tens makes for a surprisingly good nurse.

While she finishes barricading the door of their upper-story little hidey-hole for the night, he drops himself onto the not-as-dirty-as-it-could-be mattress in the corner and, _carefully,_ pulls his shirt off over his head. The way he has to turn and stretch his arm yanks a groan of pain out of him and Tens throws a worried look over her shoulder while she digs through her bag for her make-shift med kit (complete with whiskey, sewing needles, and a few choice chems).

“Just give me a second,” she says. “I’ll fix you right up, promise.”

_You always do, Sunshine._

But he doesn’t say that, just waits for her to grab her stuff and leans forward a little, covering his chest and stomach as well as he can by crossing his arms and stuffing his shirt in his lap. It’s weird, being self-conscious. And it’s weirder being self-conscious and not putting in his usual amount of effort to ensure that everyone in the room thinks he _isn’t._ You got people who got a thing for ghouls, sure—sometimes it’s this whole doing-you-a-favour pity party shit and sometimes it’s just a pathetic, asshole way of trying to be edgy—but he ain’t yet met a person who doesn’t recoil, if not right in the beginning then the second the clothes start falling off whether they follow through or not. And Tens hadn’t when they’d first met (though she was about as wary of him as he is of... well, everybody) but the idea of her seeing more of him than she wants to see, the idea of seeing that all too familiar look of disgust on her face now, after all the time they’ve spent together—it makes his stomach drop, so he covers up and tries to pretend he isn’t. He’s just got too used to her looking at him like... like some jackass with a smart mouth who follows her around and watches her back. That’s how she looks at him, not like he’s the Mayor of Goodneighbor or a coward or a chem addict or a ghoul and it’s been a long time since anybody didn’t look at him like he was one or more of those things.

The mattress shifts beneath him as she settles her weight at his back. This ain’t the first time she’s had to stitch him up or put on some bandages or whatever but this is the first time he’s been so... exposed to her; he knows what’s coming and he tries to steel himself for all the ways it’s gonna hurt.

There’s no hitch in her breath though, no hesitation in her putting her hands on his shoulder, no change in the tone of her voice when she says “It’s not that bad, really.”

He wishes he could see her face, know if she was really as unaffected as she sounds. Then again, maybe he doesn’t really want to know.

But he doesn’t say that either. “Where’d you learn to do all this shit, anyway? You a medic or something, down in that Vault?”

He hears her twist the cap off her little bottle of whiskey. “No,” she says softly and she chuckles, but it ain’t the kind of sound that makes him think she’s happy. “The, ah, _medical training_ came with my job. Had to learn it on the field.”

_On the field?_ She passes him the bottle and he throws back a few mouthfuls before he passes it back. “Thought you said you hadn’t been out in the Wasteland before?” In fact, he’s sure that’s what she said back when they first met in Goodneighbor.

“I hadn’t,” she says and he still isn’t catching her meaning but he’s distracted by the sudden cold—and then the sudden burn—of the alcohol running down his arm and over his gunshot wound. _Damn._

He grits his teeth. “What _was_ your job, then?”

She stops. He can feel her get still behind him, can feel her get tense, like it’s in the very air, and she’s quiet for a minute. He swallows back the worry that he’s... done something, brought attention to himself and his body, as if sitting in front of her with his shirt off wasn’t enough in the way of drawing attention he wants and doesn’t want at the same time. But hell, it can’t be that, not unless the rads have decided he needs an extra arm growing out of his back or something. And she was fine a minute ago, she was—

“I was a killer,” she finally says, so quiet he almost doesn’t hear, even in the silence around them, and then her hands are back at work, effortlessly skimming over his ruined skin like they’d never left their place. “I took care of my boss’s... problems.”

He tries to turn around to look at her but she puts her hand on the side of his face and tells him to sit still. She pulls that hand away far too soon. But a killer? Not her, not his— _ain’t my anything_ —not her, surely. “What, like a mercenary?”

“No. Just a killer; sniper, usually.”

What the fuck’s a Vault need with a sniper?

She gives his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before she grabs the tweezers (he hates those goddamn things) and says “This is gonna hurt, John.”

_John._ It’s so easy—too damn easy—for her to get him off track. _John._ A name, a man, somewhere in between the man he was and the man he decided he wanted to be. Almost always, it’s Hancock. If a drifter or a citizen or a scavver knows what’s good for them, it’s Hancock. And with her too, on the road or in a fight or at the bar, it’s Hancock. But sometimes—like now—it’s _John_ and when she calls him _John,_ it makes him feel like he’s coated in static. It’s a good feeling, his name falling off her lips, her thinking it’s worth saying.

“Always have liked it rough,” he teases. It’s a hell of a lot easier than saying anything else, though he usually restricts his flirting to the adrenaline of travel and fights. Easier to pretend they’re just a couple of friends playing a game and that if she doesn’t mean a word of it, he doesn’t either.

She laughs but her voice gives her away, coated in worry as it is. “I’ll keep that in mind for later. You ready?”

He nods. He’s not ready because it really, really is going to— _it fucking hurts._ Every muscle tenses and he goes rigid. The ends of the tweezers are cold and there’s pushing and pulling _in_ his arm and even though it’s something he’s had to do before, the idea of what she’s doing makes him feel sick but he bites down hard as he can, grinds his teeth. He’s not making a goddamn sound but he can hardly hear her voice (“I know, sweetheart.” “Almost done.” “You’re ok, you’re doing fine.”) over the way his pulse is thumping in his ears as she pulls out the bullet, skin and muscle pulling along with the movement. _Fuck. Fucking fuck! Goddamn it!_ And then it’s done and the left-over pain is aching and sharp all at once but his body relaxes, knowing the worst is over, and he breathes again.

“...bandages and I’ll do the stitches when it’s a little less tender,” she’s saying. Hell, he doesn’t know, just nods his head and slumps forward, resting his good elbow on his knee while she wraps him up. It takes a minute for the worst of it to wash over him; doesn’t even realize her hands are still on him ‘til he starts to get up and she pulls them away. He stops moving just as quick, unthinking but wholly unwilling to be the one to break the contact and she takes the hint, settles her hands back on his shoulders.

“You alright?”

He tells himself that he lets out a heavy breath because he’s tired and he’s hurt and not at all because of her thumbs rubbing soothing circles along his neck and spine. It’s everything he can do not to lean back into her, not to press up into her hands.

“Never better,” he says. But that came out wrong; that’s not what he meant. “Definitely not the worst bullet I’ve taken.”

“I’ve had my fair share too,” she says. “They always hurt.”

He shuts his eyes and decides he’ll allow himself this, whatever it is: her hands and her voice and her worrying over him. He can get back to pretending tomorrow, or whenever she takes a good look at her hands travelling over ridges and scars and ugliness and jerks away from him. But just for now, he _is_ tired and he _is_ hurt and her fingers are making their way up his neck, knocking his hat over into his lap, and he’s not about to stop her.

It’s quiet for a while, her smoothing away the tension in his head and neck and shoulders. He can’t remember the last time someone did anything like this for him and he finds himself leaning forward over his knees, silently begging her to work out all the knots along his back and thanking any god that’ll listen when she does slide her hands a little lower. He’s content to stay that way too, until he hears a happy humming sound and realizes it’s coming from _him._ “So, the Vault,” he starts, then clears his throat. “What’s that like?”

“Cold, I guess,” she says, pressing a thumb along the inside of his shoulder blade. “Pretty damn quiet now, too, I expect.”

Something about the way she says that has alarms ringing in the back of his head but he doesn’t know why and damn, her hands are heaven, so it’s pretty low on his priority list at the moment. “We hear from 81 every now and then,” he says, rolling his head to one side so she can work out the muscles above his collarbone. “Traders, mostly. But 111’s been sealed up ‘til now, ain’t it?”

She snorts. “Oh yeah.”

“So why’d—”

His eyes pop open when she cuts him off by dragging a finger soft and quick up his side and he curves away from her touch with a shudder. Tickles a bit sure, but that’s not why he double-checks that his hat’s still in his lap.

“What’s with the twenty questions tonight?” she asks.

“Just...” _Just want to know you. Just want to talk so I don’t think. Just want to pretend your hands ain’t all over me. Just want to keep from pretending they are._ He stares at the wall in front of them and says “Just wondering.”

She resumes her work around his neck and he tips his head the other way as she makes her way around to the other side.

“I guess that’s fair,” she concedes. “You—you been hanging around for a while.” He gets the feeling that’s not what she was gonna say.

“That mean you’re gonna answer?”

“Some of them. Maybe.” The tone of her voice almost keeps him from saying anything; she sounds like answering his questions is the last thing she wants to do, but then he feels the mattress shift as she moves a little closer to him and her voice is a little perkier when she says “Go on. Shoot.”

“When you said you were a sniper—”

“Damn, you don’t start small, do you?”

She leans forward a bit to press into the muscles right above the juts of his hips and he can feel her breath on the back of his shoulder. The noise that pulls out of him sure isn’t a fucking word. “Not my style,” he manages, shutting his eyes again. “So what’d you mean?”

She laughs at that and goddamn, she’s so close to his neck. Good _fuck,_ if he weren’t already ruined, this woman would do him in. “You know what a sniper is, John.”

_John._ The breath of it right against his ear, his neck, just the way it’d be if he had her pressed down into this bed, her legs around his waist. _John. John. John._

_Shit._ He shifts a little and tries not to undo all her work—her good, good work—by letting his muscles tense in embarrassment and worry and self-consciousness and everything else that John Fucking Hancock is not supposed to be plagued with. “I just, ah... I have a hard time picturing it.”

“Why?”

Part of him can believe it; hell, anybody that’s seen her fight could believe it: the way those grey eyes go hard as steel when she’s putting a round through a raider’s head or staring down the barrel of an enemy gun or dragging a knife across a bad guy’s throat. But you hand the woman 100 caps, a bag of food, and a scrap of Old World junk and a settlement’s gonna eat for a week, gonna have a brand new generator running clean water into pipes and probably a couple damn space heaters too. Hard as her eyes can be, they go soft too—he’s seen it, the way she looks over the dead and the way she looks at Valentine and Dogmeat, hell, the way she looks at him sometimes too.

And these hands of hers? The kind of hands that take a bullet from his arm, that press warmth and care into his wasted skin, that make it too hard not to hear _John, John, John_ echo in his head with want and something more. He’s never seen her hands do anything less than what needed to be done—from comforting a stranger to killing a killer. It’s all just good when it’s in her hands.

“Doesn’t seem like your kinda work, is all.”

She stops moving, stone still with her hands on his shoulders, and the suddenness of it makes him freeze up too. He’s done it now, done something that’s too much. Or she’s noticed something, realized what she’s had her hands on this whole time, who—what—she’s been touching and how and what he’s thinking, what he’s been thinking for a while now, the way he watches her too carefully and grins at her too much and actually means every goddamn stupid word he says when they’re joking around on the field. Fuck. _Fuck,_ he’s fucked up now, let himself melt into the drag of her hands and forgot just which side of the line he’s on and—

She drops her forehead against the back of his neck and sighs. “It was exactly my kind of work,” she says. And there’s that hollow laugh again, the one that isn’t a laugh so much as a lie. “Don’t let me fool you, John. I was very good at my job.”

Too much of everything about her doesn’t make any sense. The way she talks sometimes, the things she doesn’t say, doesn’t know. There’s so much he just doesn’t get, but he hopes he’s getting there.

Hell, there’s plenty he hasn’t told her yet.

_Yet. Gettin’ a little too expectant there, ain’t ya, pal?_

But she’s been fighting the fight at his side the whole time he’s been fighting at hers. She’s stitched him up and passed him a few beers and he didn’t miss the way she _just so happened_ to drop the good blanket on his bed the other night. Hell, last twenty minutes she’s had her hands on more of him than she’s seen before, pressed her sweet fingers into every ridge and scar and now she’s got her forehead resting against him, confessing to his back like she’s not the best goddamn thing to happen to the Commonwealth since... ever.

He swallows and brings his hands up to rest on hers; doesn’t know if the comfort he wants to offer is worth anything more than a laugh to her, but...

“Don’t know if it much matters,” he says, squeezing her fingers. “What matters is what you’re doing now. Good works and all that.”

Again she’s still and he thinks maybe he’s crossed a line by reaching out to touch her, maybe he’s ruined it, but she lets out a deep breath that melts the tension in them both and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear to god he felt lips pressed against him, just barely, just for the briefest second, but _no. No, no. You get that shit under control, Hancock. Got enough of a problem already, jackass._

“Maybe so,” she whispers. Then she’s straightened up and the weight of her no longer against him is the worst kind of cold, but still her hands are there and he doesn’t let go ‘til she moves away.

“Time for the stitches,” she says, almost like a chastisement, and the playfulness in her voice dissolves the weight hanging over them.

As if to remind him, the pain in his arm seems to flare up just a bit. He rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. “Yeah, I was, uh, hoping we could just stick to the massage portion of the evening.”

She laughs and he hears the click of that little case she keeps her stuff in. “If you’re good, maybe we’ll get back to that.”

“And if I’m bad?” Stupid idea. Really, really stupid, but he can’t help himself so he just shifts his good arm over his hat in his lap and ignores how much more awkward things are going to be if he can’t get a grip by the time she’s done sewing him up. Of course, when he looks over his shoulder at her pulling a needle from her case, he wilts. Shit’s gonna fucking hurt and a hard-on’s probably not gonna be a problem in about thirty seconds.

Her brows wrinkle together while she tries to get the needle threaded. “The more you wiggle, the more it’s gonna hurt.”

_You could kiss it and make it better._ He grins and almost delivers what is sure to be the smoothest line ever laid out if it was anyone but him saying it to anyone but her. Then he decides he's pushed his luck enough for tonight so he stops and just gets himself comfortably situated, knowing he’s not going to be able to move for the next twenty minutes or so.

After a couple more seconds and one exasperated sigh, she’s back at his side, sitting with one knee up for him to rest his arm on and the other hooked around him to keep him as still as possible. This is not what he’d been thinking of when he’d imagined her legs wrapped around him.

As she undoes the bandages, the injury starts throbbing again.

“Try not to think about it,” she says, knowing he can be oddly squeamish about the idea of needles in his flesh and... _ugh._

“Kinda hard not to,” he says back, staring at the wall, eyes tracing the old posters and counting the days on the pinned up calendar. Nuke the place and kill almost everything, but a Vault Tec calendar and some Nuka Cola poster make it through well enough. That’s about as fucked as it gets.

She starts the first stitch and the prick of the needle is dulled out quick enough by the bigger hurt, the way his arm feels like it’s gonna fuckin’ fall off or explode or something. It’s less about the sharp little pains of each in-and-out and more about the way it all adds up to one big _fuck you_ from the Commonwealth. Next raider he sees is getting it right between the eyes.

“How many?”

“Couple more,” she says, tightening her grip on him when he can’t stop the little jerk of his arm. “You’re doing good, John. You’re doing real good.”

Just like before, he can barely even hear her over the way his blood is pounding in his head but it helps anyway, to know she’s talking, to know that somewhere in the white noise of pulse and pain and his brain spewing curses that don’t get past gritted teeth, she’s saying “You’re doing good, John. You’re doing good, sweetheart.”

“...one of my best patients,” she laughs. “The others could throw some fits.”

And just like before, he has to let the haze of hurt clear from his head before he can really focus on what she’s saying, before he can really pick up on “the others.”

“Here,” she says, putting an inhaler in his hand. “Might help take the sting off.”

And yeah, he’s glad she’s got a couple of these bad boys stowed away for emergencies but that can wait; his brain’s still dancing around “the others.”

“From the Vault?” he asks.

She stops cleaning her set to look up at him, confusion clear on her face. “What?”

“The others. Others from the Vault?”

She looks down at her hands, holding a needle and a cap of alcohol, and her face softens. “My team,” she says. “They were from before.”

_Before._ It’s one of those things that just doesn’t make any sense to him and he doesn’t know how to ask because he’s just not sure what she means. Before what?

“You want to go?”

Now it’s his turn to look at her like he’s got no idea what she’s talking about.

“To the Vault, I mean. I think—well, I think maybe it’s time I... showed you some stuff.”

He thinks back to all the stories he’s heard about 81, about settlements like Covenant and what he knows about Diamond City. “Will they let me in?”

She laughs so hard she spills her little bit of cleansing whiskey on her knee and goddamn him, he can’t stop the image of him leaning over her to lick it off her skin. “Well, they sure as shit aren’t going to stop us,” she says.

He doesn’t get the joke and anyway, something about the look on her face, about the way a laugh is so rarely just a laugh with her, sets off those little alarms of worry in his head again.

She shakes her head and finishes cleaning up, tosses the bloodied bandages and pulls out a few lengths of fresh ones to re-wrap his arm. “Come on,” she says, settling, once more, by his side and gesturing for him to raise his arm. “Last thing and then you can get some rest.”

As they always are for things like this, her hands are gentle when she wraps the wound.  While she keeps her eyes steady on his arm, he keeps his eyes steady on her—her fingers so careful of him, so quick to readjust to every twitch of discomfort; her eyes so focused, taking in every crease and mark of his skin and full of nothing but worry; her lips pressed into a line, concentrating on doing it right, on taking care of him, the way they’d feel pressed against his back, barely there before they’re gone and maybe they really had been, maybe she’d...

_You’ve been done in, John,_ he tells himself. _Completely fucking ruined._

**Author's Note:**

> I might also do the "Here's the Vault and my dead neighbors. Tada!" business too, but later.  
> For the love of god, don't ever clean a wound with whiskey if you can help it. OUCH  
> Also, for some reason, I really like the idea of badass Hancock being squeamish about medical stuff like stitches.  
> Also also, this is the perfect set-up scenario for smut and I wish I could write smut if only for this moment. And, even better, if I'd done it that way, I'd have started with a gunshot wound, ended with a romp, and abso-fucking-lutely titled it "Bang, Bang."


End file.
